Millions of XRP Transferred With Strange Message: Ripple CTO Breaks Silence

In a recent development on the XRPL blockchain, a mysterious message was discovered during the transfer of a substantial amount of 400 million XRP tokens. The unusual message was encrypted and caught the attention of the XRP community, sparking confusion and speculation.

The message originated from DAI’s escrow account and contained intriguing words: “DAI’s rat is caught on a mouse trap,” among other things. The enigmatic nature of the message raised questions among XRP enthusiasts about the security and integrity of the XRPL blockchain.

😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/caq0hekMLH

— Santiago Velez ☀️ 🏴‍☠️🪝 (@Santiag78758327) August 1, 2023

The incident caught the attention of David Schwartz, the current CTO at Ripple and one of the XRPL architects. In response to the confusion, Schwartz addressed the XRP community’s concerns.

How could this happen?

Responding to the community’s queries, Schwartz emphasized that XRP Ledger does not differentiate between users based on their affiliations, such as governments or banks. Anyone can attach memos to their transactions, and if necessary, clean up certain ledger entries. The CTO shed light on the specific instance where an escrow associated with Ripple had expired, thereby taking up unnecessary ledger space. As such, the option for any party to “clean up” such expired escrows exists.

Further clarifying the decision to let users “clean up” instead of implementing time-based triggers within the ledger, Schwartz noted the potential risks of unbounded work and malicious attacks. He exemplified how attackers could create multiple escrows set to complete simultaneously, posing potential issues for the system.

Instead, he highlighted the practicality of waiting for transactions to handle such situations and underlined the ability of users to address problems they find concerning.